As Alex Renton writes in Times Online, wine is usually the most expensive item on restaurant bills – and wine is where restaurants take their profit.
Now the gloves are off: at Il Vino d’Enrico Bernardo in Paris, customers first order wine and then wait to see what the chef comes up with to “display truly the wine to its grandest advantage. ”
Renton ordered a 2005 premier cru Nuits Saint Georges and a dry Vouvray from 2008. The red burgundy was full, nutty and velvet, and to show it off the waiter arrived with a small bowl of mushroom ravioli in strong chicken jus, a tangle of almost caramelised fungi on top. The Vouvray, a famously flowery wine, got a dish of lightly poached oysters langoustine in a gentle sauce of coconut milk and lemon grass.
The concept works so well that the restaurant got a Michelin star almost as soon as it opened a couple of years ago. The proprietor is laughing all the way to the bank.
Il Vino d’Enrico Bernardo, 13 Bd de La Tour-Maubourg, 7th arrondissement; 0144 117200. There is also a Courchevel branch
